Richard McBee
Sotah Drinks, 2009, Oil on canvas, 50.8 x 50.8 cm; ©️ Richard McBee; Photo: courtesy Richard McBee
Voyeuristic Violence
Commentary by Maryanne Saunders
‘Sotah’ is the rabbinic term for a (suspected) disloyal wife, discussed in Numbers 5:11–31. Her husband, if doubting her fidelity, could bring her to the Tabernacle for a public trial, which would take the form of a ritual test. (The word ‘Sotah’ can also refer to the ritual itself.)
Richard McBee’s Sotah Drinks frames the ritual as a social spectacle in a timeless-placeless but recognizably non-ancient setting. If the effect is to bring it nearer to home, this is striking, for there is no record of the test having been performed in post-biblical times.
McBee’s Sotah stands by the Ark of the Covenant as she ingests the waters in front of her community. One half of the gathered assembly, dressed in black, appears mostly male and jostles to see the ordeal. The other half, in white, is subdued and reticent while being notably fewer in number.
The voyeuristic, perhaps even pornographic, nature of the ritual has been discussed by Rabbi Sarra Lev (2009). Rabbinic commentators, notably including Maimonides (Sotah 3), referred to the tearing of the Sotah’s clothing. This is a gesture richly invested in power, argues Lev, and is often enacted for the viewer’s (or reader’s) titillation. As in textual or visual pornography, Lev proposes that the (presumed) male viewer is invited to imagine being the actor, ‘the man’ in the scene—in this case the priest whose role it is to violate the Sotah, or else a spectator. The ripping of the garments can express grief in more traditional Jewish contexts, but in Lev’s contemporary reading, it can be viewed as a form of sexual assault.
Lev emphasizes the construction of blame in the ritual, in which the suspicion aroused by the wife is considered to be just cause for her punishment regardless of her potential innocence. McBee captures the complicity and sanction of the religious officials and communities in the procedure. Misogyny and patriarchy do not exist in a vacuum; in order to enact violence on women they require structural and societal support beyond the whim of a single jealous husband. The painting showcases both the voyeurism inherent in such an event as well as the extreme nature of it as a prohibitive example to others who look on.
References
Lev, Sarra. 2009. ‘1 Sotah: Rabbinic Pornography?’, in The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism, ed. by Danya Ruttenberg (New York: New York University Press), pp. 7–23
